As I sat at my desk this morning enjoying my coffee, I received an e-mail from a co-worker asking that I text “HAITI” to 90999. As she so eloquently put it, “If I can spend $5 on my morning Starbucks, I can certainly afford to donate $10 to Haiti relief.” Yesterday, Jane Wamsley blogged about the devastation in Haiti and how this has become a popular topic on social sites and search engines. The Yele Haiti Foundation had already put into effect a text donation of $5 by texting “Yele” to 501501.

The American Red Cross has also established a similar program to make donating a simple act: a standard text message. According to Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, this marks “the biggest day in the history of mobile-giving in the U.S.” In addition to Verizon, the largest wireless provider, other top carriers (including AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) are also supporting this donation campaign. As of Wednesday afternoon, Verizon customers had donated more than $300,000, and adding the mobile donations from other carriers, this total has surpassed $1 million.

Here’s how it works:

1. Text “HAITI” to 90999.
2. Respond to the follow-up text message with “YES.”
3. $10 will be added to your next phone bill.

Verizon and T-Mobile users will not be charged for these donation text messages; however, standard text messaging fees may apply for AT&T and Sprint users.

As we’ve discussed many times over, last year was a big year for mobile, and 2010 will be even bigger. Only 13 days into 2010, we have already seen a milestone in mobile usage. Today, I’m crossing my fingers that many other mobile users will follow suit to push the mobile donation total past the $2 million mark.